Welcome to Science, Scripture, and Salvation, a radio ministry of the Institute for Creation Research. In this program, we want to encourage you in your Christian faith by showing how scientific evidence supports the Bible, particularly the Genesis account. The book of Genesis lays the foundation for all matters addressed in the rest of the Bible. The nature of God, His sovereignty in creation, man's purpose, sin, marriage, family, and why we need a Savior are all introduced and explained in Genesis. When we see that the first and most foundational book of the Bible can be trusted in all matters, including science, it builds confidence in the rest of the inspired word all the way to Revelation.
On today's show, we'll be joined by Dr. Randy Galuza, medical doctor and national representative with the Institute for Creation Research. Here's Dr. Galuza. As we record this, we're approaching the 2018 Winter Olympics.
All of us are looking forward to seeing some of those great athletes do their best, and one of my Favorite events is the snowboarding. That's one of the newest ones. And when you watch a snowboarder go down that hill and they begin to roll and twist and spin and they jump and they twirl, And some of them flip around, and then other ones in other events are going to run and leap and lunge in a single motion, and humans can do this in complex combinations, and we can actually do some of these things in barefeet, or slippers, or shoes, or skates, or skis, or boards. We can do it forward, we can do it backwards, we can do flips on one leg, we can do it on two. In fact, what humans can do is totally unmatched in the real world.
Human engineers can't even come up with a robot that's even comparable to this. You know, even really strong and nimble animals can't compare.
So when we see these snowboarders or gymnasts or ballerinas or ice skaters and we watch their body do all those incredible moves, We know one thing, they have an incredible Creator who enabled them to do all of that.
Well, how do they do that?
Well the first step In doing any of these great moves, just like any man-made control system, is to know where your body is in space. In order to know where your body is in space you have to know what's happening to it, and in order to do that you have to have some pretty exquisite sensors. and we have some right in our middle ear. We have two sensors which are able to detect straight line motions. And in order to do that, they actually have to exploit two properties of nature.
You know both of them. One of 'em is called momentum and the other is inertia. Inertia is a property that resists being moved.
So it takes a little more force to get a rock moving than a feather, and once it's moving, it wants to continue moving that's momentum, and a rock obviously has a lot more momentum than a feather.
Well, these sensors in your ear take advantage of those properties. In fact, they develop right as your tiny little embryo inside your mother's womb, and the sensor has three parts. One part is attached to the base of your skull, and the other, quite remarkable, the top layer is made up of tiny little stones, actually called otoliths or ear stones, and in between is a flexible little gel mat. and embedded in that are tiny little hairs which are tiny censors.
So when you're at rest, Nothing is moving. But once you begin to move forward, your head moves, and in just a fraction of a second, actually one one-thousandth of a second, the tiny little Earstones hold back because of inertia, but eventually they catch up. And they start moving at the same speed as your head. And then when you stop, your head stops, but the tiny little earstones keep going forward. That relative motion of those stones compared to your skull is what your brain is able to detect.
Tiny little sensors, little hair cells, which bend forward and back, tell you whether you're moving forward or backward. We actually have two of these sensors on each ear. One of them is parallel to the ground, which makes sense. And the other is perpendicular.
So when you go up and down in an elevator, you're able to sense that linear motion as well. And both of these sensors are very exquisite. They're able to detect the slightest little motion. and in less than one one thousandth of a second they can detect whether you're going forward or back. Really, they detect just little jiggles.
But that's not enough. If you're going to be a great snowboarder, you actually have to be able to spin and twirl and and do those things, so you have to be able to detect your rotary motion. And in order to detect the rotary motion, we have also sensors in our ears, one on each side. But these have little tubes, and the tubes are bent in the three axes, one parallel to the ground, one perpendicular to the ground, and one in between. These tiny little tubes are filled with a fluid.
There's cells lining them, and they make a tiny little fluid. And they also exploit the properties of inertia and momentum, And inside the little tube is another little sensor.
So as you begin to turn, initially your skull turns and the fluid, because of inertia, stays still and it pushes the little sensor backward. But eventually as you begin to spin, if you are an ice skater spinning, spinning around, all of the fluid would catch up, It would be spinning at the same time as your body. And your body would detect that and then as you begin to pull out of your spin and slow down your skull stops but the fluid continues to spin because of momentum and it deflects the sensor the other way and your body detects that. These are exquisite sensors, able to detect in less than one tenth of a degree. per second of your motion.
And this is how you're able to detect when you are beginning to turn around. It's time for a short break. Stay with us. Dinosaurs are fascinating creatures. Seeing their fossils inspires a sense of awe and wonder that sparks the imagination.
We're learning more about them all the time, but many questions still remain: Are dinosaurs really millions of years old? Did they live at the same time as humans? How do they fit with the Bible? And why are they extinct today? The Institute for Creation Research addresses these questions and more in their full-color and easy-to-read book, Guide to Dinosaurs.
Guide to Dinosaurs delves into the history of dinosaurs, fossil discoveries, dinosaur kinds, and what the Bible has to say about these mysterious creatures. It serves as a helpful resource for parents and kids alike. Order your copy of Guide to Dinosaurs from the Institute for Creation Research by calling 800-628-7640 or visiting icr.org. That's 800-628-7640 or visiting icr.org. Yeah.
Welcome back to Science, Scripture, and Salvation, a radio ministry of the Institute for Creation Research. Here's Dr. Galuza. Right before our break, we learned about two exquisite sensors that you have inside of your body, actually in your middle ear. The little maculae, which are able to detect straight-line motion.
and the others which are able to detect rotary motion. And we saw how a great snowboarder or a figure skater is able to use these to integrate their sense of where they are in space in order to do those great moves which we all like to watch during the Winter Olympics. But that's not enough. a snowboarder goes down the hill and he senses his motion down. And he's going to be using his legs for balance, and he's going to be using his legs for control.
In addition to those sensors in your middle ear, you literally have thousands of sensors all over your body to detect your muscle movements. There are some on the muscles themselves, there are some sensors on the joint capsules surrounding your joints.
So, as you put pressure on those joints, or as the fluid surrounding your joints is stressed, Little sensors can detect that, and signals are sent to your brain, and your brain is able to determine and interpret those to see just exactly what is happening with your body.
So the brain is going to need to integrate Literally, millions of data points coming from sensors in your ears, sensors in your joints, and of course those eyes, which are so important. And it's not just taking in the visual information of our skateboarder as he looks down the slope. Your brain is actually able to integrate data coming from where your eyes are aimed. What you are looking at. There is ability to sense where they're gazing and the rate at which they are changing, and your brain integrates that information with the rotary information which is coming to your ears so that it tells you where your body is in space, but also enables you to slowly and gradually move your eyes so that it can stay fixed on a target if it needs to, or rapidly adjust to the next point along the slope that you need to hit in order to make your spin.
And all of this information is going to be well integrated together. mostly in a part of your brain called the cerebellum.
So if you were to take your hand and put it at the back of your neck, right where your neck attaches to the base of your skull, that is the part of the brain where your cerebellum is located.
Now the cerebellum, it only has about 10% of the brain mass. but incredibly it has over fifty per cent of the neurons for the brain. That is because the cerebellum is what integrates balance in motion It integrates what we're looking at and how we are able to use our eyes to stay focused on a target and to keep moving all along. And the cerebellum is going to take an enormous amount of data. And the cerebellum will interpret these.
Interpret them to where you're moving, and then other signals will be sent to other areas of your brain. In order for you to plan your motions, one will go to a pre-motion area. where you will access essentially memories from your past of how you have done movements. And nobody knows exactly how they're stored in the brain. That is still a great mystery.
We don't. Think that there's an exact plan for those stored in the brain. It's not exactly like a hard drive where we could find those little data points on the hard drive.
So, how things are stored in the brain is still a mystery, but we know that plans. Pre-programmed plans are accessed, and they're going to tell this skateboarder. Kind of like the gross movements of what his body has to do, and then information will be sent back to his cerebellum, constantly comparing where his body is in space. And then eventually, other signals will be sent to a motor area of his brain where all of the fine motions that he'll have to execute, such as what the angle of his ankle will be, or how he wants to tip his toes so that he lands perfectly on that snow and keeps going. Those will all be integrated and constantly being updated, updated, updated with information coming in from all of these sensors to his brain.
Now you're probably wondering, how in the world does the brain ever handle all that information?
Well, the brain is not just a simplified computer at all. It is actually a quantum megaprocessor. at a scale which nobody can even begin to fathom as yet. In fact, one report said that what your brain is able to do would take over ten megawatts of power to operate, and yet it operates on only ten watts of power. When we look at those snowboarders, truly we marvel at their great skill and ability, but we should really marvel at the great wisdom and genius of the Lord Jesus Christ who put them together, and He's the only one who could make something to integrate all of those sensors and all the brain to work just as we see.
What beauty in motion Thank you for joining us on Science, Scripture, and Salvation, a radio ministry of the Institute for Creation Research. That's all the time we have for our program today, but we would love to connect with you through our website at icr.org. For over 45 years, ICR has equipped believers with evidence of the Bible's accuracy and authority by showing how science supports the Genesis creation account. Our scientists research the evidence for creation and communicate their findings through books, articles, DVD series, and conferences. Please visit our website at icr.org for more information about the latest scientific discoveries, to subscribe to our free magazine and devotional, and to locate our next creation conference at a venue near you.
All of this and more at icr.org. If you've enjoyed this podcast, subscribe to Science, Scripture, and Salvation on iTunes. Also, do us a favor and rate and review the show so that more listeners can find us. Thanks for listening and God bless.
